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I have started reading The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by economist Don Thompson, and it mentions (on page 11 of my 2008 hardback edition) an episode I vaguely remember:
In 2003 a 25-year-old student named Clinton Boisvert at the School of Visual Arts in New York was asked to produce a sculpture project showing how the emotion elicited by art could impact on life. Boisvert created three dozen black boxes each stenciled with the word “Fear.” He had just finished hiding the last of these in New York City subway stations when he was arrested. A dozen stations were shut down for several hours while police squads retrieved the sculptures. Boisvert was convicted of reckless endangerment, but received an “A” for the project.
I googled this Boisvert character, but found nothing else except this one episode. I guess there is bourgeois respectability, in the form of lots of things that the imaginary bourgeoisie are imagined still to take seriously and to get outraged about, which art has traded on by treading on for over a century. And then there is actual respectability, the outraging of which causes the actual bourgeoisie – the sort that likes, exhibits in galleries, and buys contemporary art rather than being outraged by it – to want nothing to do with you on account of you being just too much trouble.
More generally, I am reading the book quoted above because I find myself wanting to know more about the phenomenon of Modern Art/Contemporary Art (Thompson says Modern is before 1970 and Contemporary is after 1970). My first thought is that what caused and causes Modern Art etc. – what is Modern art – is complicated, and that there is no one thing that can explain it or describe it properly. See my cascade of self-commenting here, which was where I first blogged about Thompson’s book. The rise of photography and then of the cinema and television, the rise of and nature of the modern news media, the demoralisation afflicting European culture as a result of the World Wars, WW1 in particular, the Baby Boom and its serial obsessions, lots of new money, etc. etc. etc. … there are many reasons why the visual arts in the twentieth century and since have turned out the way they have. The temptation to reduce Modern Art and all its works to one particular sort of annoyingness – modern art is nothing but … !! – is, well, very tempting. But such temptation should be resisted, because whichever single cause you choose is just not going to be the whole story.
It would not be true, for instance, to say that Contemporary Art, or Modern Art, is only about winding people up and getting lots of outraged publicity, although of course that definitely is part of the story. But, all comments on the above ruminations will be most welcome to me, even foolishly reductive single cause comments, but citing single causes which I had not thought about before.
Just now, my personal favourite contributory cause of Modern/Contemporary Art (because so often neglected in amongst all the complaints about dead sharks) is the demand for quiet spaces which one may visit without being bombarded with multiple advertising messages and reminders of one’s disappointing place in the rat race, and where one may consort with other rats who likewise don’t like to be reminded of their insufficiently ratlike ratness all the time, for example by portraits of self-important rat race winners of the past. But all this without having to doff one’s cap to a religion that one does not believe in. If that’s your problem, an art gallery adorned with blank canvasses, or canvasses consisting of big coloured rectangular blobs, could be just what you want. Which means that the very same art objects which outrage some with their meaninglessness can simultaneously soothe others, with that very same meaninglessness.
I just received this note in private email from a fellow board member of the National Space Society:
For those who haven’t been on a news site or station in the last few hours, a small asteroid that was discovered *this morning* is going to enter the atmosphere over the Sudan at 10:46 PM EDT. Estimated size is in the 10 ft
range. It is not expected to reach the surface, but it *is* expected to create a 1 kiloton fireball. Should be visible from northern Africa and possibly southern Europe, so there might be a chance of live video on one of
the major outlets. Interestingly, I am having trouble getting into spaceweather.com and space.com, so it looks like people are paying some attention. – JP
So if you are one of our readers who happens to be well to the south in Europe, please do report back if you see anything a couple hours from now. I will be watching for videos to show up in blogs and the big outlets.
We can all be very, very happy it is only a couple meters in diameter…. this time.
Note: The email seemed to indicate today; the only article I have found elsewhere so far seems to indicate last night. I am still looking…
Government consistently works to undermine trust in other institutions in order to build its power. That is calculated to increase anxiety, and dependency on the state. It is a sort of reverse confidence trick. The ordinary con-man creates a false relationship of trust, and lets you believe he has something you actually want. The key political trick is, to create false suspicion in order to make you seek a “safety” you never really needed.
Now governments that have spent a decade or more telling the public to be very, very afraid, that it is helpless and needs more powerful government to save it, are very ill-adapted to deal with a loss of confidence in the financial markets. They seem to grasp dimly that stopping a panic ought to be the aim, but their approach to stopping a panic is to appear on television for emergency announcements that the situation is uniquely grave and unpredictable and so government is now going to be doing big arbitrary things inconsistently and without warning.
If they wanted calm resolution from others, then demonstrating it themselves might be a good way to start. But they don’t know how.
“Instead of thinking of the pending bailouts and financial regulation as a new era of government supervisions of markets, think of it as preserving the system in which a Harvard elite controls other people’s money. In fact, very little is likely to change. Reading the news stories about how Secretary Paulson plans to implement the bailout, it seems as though the same people will be in charge of the money. Print some new business cards, change the logo on the front from “Goldman Sachs” to “U.S. Treasury,” and everything else continues as it was. It’s just that it becomes a lot more difficult for ordinary people to opt out of using the elite’s money management services.”
– Arnold Kling. He is not exactly a fan of the US financial bailout.
People sometimes say they wish the politicians would get together and agree, instead of bickering and arguing. I wish the politicians and political parties would disagree more about the issues, so that actions and policies can be properly tested and choices evaluated. Consensus often breeds the worst errors.
– John Redwood
William Rees-Mogg wonders, in his Times (of London) column today, whether Barack Obama has it in him to be the next FDR. I sincerely hope not. Let us consider the following data on unemployment rates during the 1930s:
1930: 8.7%
1931: 15.9%
1932: 23.6%
1933: 24.9%
1934: 21.7%
1935: 20.1.%
1936:16.9%
1937:14.3%
1938:19%
1939:17.2%
1940:14.6%
(Source: US Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, as quoted by Thomas J. Lorenzo, in “How Capitalism Saved America, page 180-181),
With a set of figures like that, perhaps it is no wonder that hagiographers of FDR prefer to focus more on his record as a war leader these days. If Obama does share any of FDR’s traits for sheer deviousness on the economic front, we have trouble on our hands.
It is amazing how certain myths persist. Back in the early 1980s, when I was doing my history A-levels, one of my teachers gave me the whole ‘heroic’ portrait of FDR. I suspect this is still the default position of most history textbooks today.
Plans have been unveiled to construct an incredibly tall skyscraper in the Gulf. One has to admire the sheer brio of the project, even if, at a time of global economic worries, such a project smacks of possible financial hubris. The region’s oil wealth may last a while yet and Dubai has taken strides in making itself less dependent on the stuff, but I do wonder what will happen in say, 10 or 20 years’ time if, for any reason, the oil revenues seriously go into decline.
Even so, it says a lot about how strong modern building materials now are that such a building is even thinkable.
Instapundit:
I remember reading a Robert Heinlein essay from the 1940s on how absurd it would be to have your car hand-built in your driveway by a collection of artisans, and how homebuilding as practiced was equally absurd. I think he was right.
Rather than assume the rightness of this outsider’s snap judgement, I consider it more interesting to think about why things haven’t developed this way. When I was an architecture student, way back in the seventies, people had already been dreaming for decades of prefab houses. It didn’t happen then, and it isn’t, on the whole, happening now.
Here are some guesses as to why factory made houses are not happening.
Homes are not in themselves mobile. Cars, which are made in factories, are mobile. Cars have their own means of transport built in. Houses do not. Unless they are campervans or caravans. In other words, the question: Why aren’t homes made in factories? is actually a rather similar question to: Why don’t most people live in campervans or caravans? Because the engines and wheels mostly do nothing? They’re terrible to live in? People can steal them? Regular homes are simply much cheaper to make? To be transportable, whether on wheels or on a lorry, home pods have to be able to hold themselves together when being swung around by cranes, shoved about by fork lifts, etc. This extra structure is wasted, once the pod is in place. All it then has to do is stay up and solid when immobile.
Homes, especially of the more industrial looking ones, often have to do another structural job as well as a life support job. They often have to be able to support more homes on top of them. Therefore they have to be different from the ones above, and they have to be different from the ones above, and so on. Unless you just stick pods into a structure. A really heavy home pod piled on top of lots of other home pods is a shocking waste of structure, because weight at the top demands more structure under it, and so on down to the bottom.
Actually, homes are, more and more, already made in factories, but it’s the bits that are made in factories, rather than assembled into homes in factories. After failing as an architecture student I briefly worked in the actual building trade, as an ignorant sub-lieutenant “commanding” (“Carry on sergeant”) workers in the trenches. I was struck then, again back in the seventies, by how complicated and intricate and clever lots of the bits were, and how fast they were developing. And this was in suburban mini-stately homes that looked impeccably hand made, once they had been covered up with bricks and tiles. Underneath they were getting more and more like airplanes. From what I now see on building sites, that trend has not stopped. The smaller an object is, the less of a structural problem it has. Ask the insects, and the elephants. Homes are more like elephants. It makes sense to build them, on site. Out of insects. So to speak.
Washing machines, microwaves, toasters, sinks, etc. are, if you think about it, home components. They are all made in factories, because that makes sense.
Besides which, isn’t a building site a temporary factory, where it makes sense to have it? And is it really true that workers in regular factories are all morons by comparison? Surely, lots of them, more and more now, are “artisans” also. Having also done jobs at various times in my life that were supposed to be totally “unskilled”, I came to believe that, actually, there is no such thing as unskilled labour. The factory made homes proposal is just an argument about where the home assembling artisans should practice their art.
I know, I know, buildings made with shipping containers. But these kinds of buildings are not really catching on, are they? I suspect this is mostly fun/concept architecture, rather than a serious spreadable idea. Like living in a sculpture (which is a trend, I do admit).
The relative cost of land and mere home-building must have something to do with this. Home-building means making the absolute most of each site, and each site is different, unique even, which makes mass production of homes less viable, as opposed to mass producing windows or drainpipes. Roads, on the other hand, are just roads, although even more expensive than mere land. A bit of road is a flat surface the whole point of which is to be just like all the other bits of road. Roads are also assmbled on site, rather than made in factories and then just unrolled on site, for similar reasons to why homes are assembled on site, only more so. Tanks and other tracked vehicles being the exception, because they do unroll the road in front of them wherever they go.
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
– John Adams.
Peter Mandelson’s re-appointment to Gordon Brown’s cabinet is a potential disaster, and not just for Britain.
I have always liked Mandelson more than any other Labour politician. I ought to hate him, because his strategic genius gave us the New Labour revolution of the last decade. But his lucent unwillingness to pretend he is an imbecile, to conceal the fact of his cunning, or to act out his party’s customary hatred of private enterprise, even while his pupils execute their vile populist capers, is to me endearing.
Maybe that is why I’m worried more than stunned by his return to British politics. While most commentators are mesmerised by the story of Brown’s feud with The Prince of Darkness, and the daring of playing with Labour Party’s own resentment of him by bringing him back from Brussels, I am more interested in strategy. Do not just look at the flashy sacrifice; see how it changes the board.
There is now a gap in the European Commission. Brown will appoint one of his favourites to it, and have far reaching influence on Europe, and therefore Britain, even after he steps down. This can be seen as a subtle purge by bribery, and as a retirement strategy. A preparation for the Brown legacy.
There is now a gap in the European Commission. Whoever fills Mandelson’s Trade portfolio will be replacing one of the most free-trade-friendly commissioners that the EU has ever had, in a financial crisis, with protectionist populism surging on both sides of the Atlantic. Brown’s legacy could easily be a trade war and a real depression.
From the Spectator:
If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant, you would get £214. So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle.
This is from two weeks ago, so adjust for the financial turmoil since… the advice still stands.
Here is a press release on the event scheduled for tomorrow:
Date: Saturday, October 4th
Time: 12:00 Noon – Doors open. Speeches begin at 1 p.m. sharp.
Location: Faneuil Hall in Boston
How to get there: PDF
More on Faneuil Hall: here
You’re going to kick yourself if you miss this Rally to END the income tax.
Maybe you heard the announcements and chatter about this YES on 1, END the state income tax rally on WTKK radio. Or heard Howie Carr asking you to come. Or read about it in the Globe or the Herald or one of the dozens of other newspapers spreading the word.
Sam Adams helped launch the American Revolution from the stage of Faneuil Hall. James Otis won hundreds to the cause of Independence and Liberty at Faneuil Hall.
Come to this rally. Join these champions of liberty. Help rally support for ENDing the income tax this Election Day.
We need you to come. We need you to bring a friend or neighbor. It’ll be exciting – and fun!
Get a look at our speakers:
* Michael Graham, Talk Show Host on WTKK, author, and stand-up comedian.
* Me. Carla Howell. Co-founder and chair of the Committee For Small Government.
* Kamal Jain, government budget analyst, will show you the tax money
* Matt Kinnaman, columnist, former candidate and Republican Party Committee Member
* Keith McCormic, Republican candidate for State Senate in the Hampshire & Franklin District
* Ted Tripp, for Citizens for Limited Taxation
* Cynthia Stead, a small business owner and weekly columnist for the Cape Cod Times and former Massachusetts Legislative and Administrative Aid
* Dr. Chuck Ormsby is a mathematics professor, a columnist, and a two-term member of the North Andover School Committee.
* John Cunningham, small businessman and tax-cutting candidate for U.S. Congress against Democrat Ed Markey
These speakers support you. They are campaigning for you. To END the income tax this November 4th.
Celebrate and Rally with these terrific champions of ENDing the income tax.
Share their laughter.
Savor their passion for lightening the tax burden of 3,400,000 Massachusetts workers and taxpayers.
Delight in their quips and insights into the huge, immediate, direct benefits to taxpayers of ENDing the income tax.
Let them share in your values. Let them meet you.
Please plan to come tomorrow. Put this in your calendar. Or your Blackberry. Or on a prominently placed Post-It Note to remind you.
Date: Saturday, October 4th
Doors Open: Noon to 1 p.m. Come early to get your seat.
Speeches begin: 1 p.m. sharp and run until approximately 2:40
Location: Faneuil Hall in Boston
Please join us. Please come.
Small government is possible,
Carla Howell
It sounds like fun, and if by chance you get thirsty during the speeches, there is a great old pub called the Green Dragon not far away where the Boston Tea Party was purportedly planned…
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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